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Winter blooms!
By Mimi Dekker
Lackluster Connecticut winters can be a real roadblock to getting outdoors, even for the most avid gardener. Yet, a garden planned and planted with winter interest can lift the spirits during our dullest season. The low trajectory of the winter sun backlights plants to reveal details we don't see in summer. And with less foliage to obscure our view, we see the structural elements in the natural growth habits of plants that only winter can offer.
 Evergreens, golds and blues - Well chosen conifers and broad-leaved evergreens are a sight for sore eyes in winter such as Pieris japonica 'Dorothy Wyckoff,' a red-budded cultivar, which shows off its winter flower buds like rubies strung on a necklace. A bright yellow mound of Chamaecyparis pisifera 'Filifera Aurea' or a beautiful weeping Tsuga canadensis 'Cole's Prostrate' strategically placed along an entry path will add serious color and form. A low mound of Juniperus squamata 'Blue Star,' with its striking blue foliage will look marvelous with a dusting of snow.
 Brilliant berries - Fall's fruits and berries can last well into winter, providing much-needed fuel for migrating or over-wintering birds. Lilac-violet berries bejewel the branches of Callicarpa dichotoma well into November. Native Ilex verticillata bear bright red berries into January. The cultivar 'Winter Red' holds onto its fruit well into March and April unless picked clean by a flock of returning robins.
Winter blooms (seems an oxymoron) - The first shrubs to flower are the fragrant (you have to go outside to smell them!) yellow to coppery red Hamamelis xintermedia species which bloom from January to March, and the flowers persist up to a month! Jasminum nudiflorum, with its little yellow trumpets, open up on green stems in January with scattered blooms appearing through March. And the bright yellow flowers of Cornus mas open up on bare stems in March, way before Forsythia. Plant one against a backdrop of Picea abies and enjoy that view!
 Helleborus x hybridra, with their glossy evergreen foliage and seeming immunity to deer, will reward you with a continual bloom of waxy yellow, gold, pink, red, white, frosty purple, speckled or spotted flowers starting in February through May. Several small flowering bulbs begin appearing as early as January with the white, winged flowers of the Galanthus species, followed by the shimmering glow of Crocus tommasinianus (often referred to as 'Snow Crocus' for good reason), and Eranthis hyemalis with their solitary, yellow cup-shaped flowers surrounded by bright green bracts that look like a rippled collar around the blossom.
Seeds, seedpods, and silhouettes - Several plants with interesting seed heads are: Hibiscus moscheutos, with its star-shaped pods perched atop six-foot tall reeds set in the coastal marshes; the glimmering, finely-beaded seed heads of Molinia caerulea 'Skyrocket,' and the airy Panicum virgatum 'Shenandoah.' For striking silhouettes backlit by the winter's sun or kissed by the morning frost, try Sedum 'Autumn Joy' with its large, flat flower heads, or the thimble-like black seed cones of Echinacea species contrasted against golden sheaths of Miscanthus sinensis 'Gracillimus.'
 Bark and twigs - All the leaves are down and it's the job of woody plants to anchor the garden. Acer griseum, an outstanding maple with coppery exfoliating bark, will beckon you outside for a closer look. Two more fabulous trees, Stewartia pseuocamellia with bark that peels off in strips of gray, orange, and reddish brown, and Pinus bungeana with bark that flakes off in round patches leaving a grey/green mottled trunk, provide a whole winter's worth of eye-candy!
Shrub dogwoods offer a wide range of colorful and interesting twig choices, and look great in thickets and small stands. Cornus alba cultivars range from yellow to red to dark purple stems, and our native Cornus stolonifera shines with bright red stems. And perhaps no winter garden is complete without Corylus avellana 'Contorta,' with its intricate, twisted, turning branches and twigs decorated with pendulous yellow catkins.
This season try planting some winter interest in your garden with colorful and textural trees, shrubs, and flowers along pathways into the house, in garden borders, or out on the perimeter. It may give you one of the best reasons to get outside next winter.
For more information:
· Read the Purdue University article (.pdf file) on winter gardening at:
http://www.indyzoo.com/pdf/Plants with_Winter_Interest.pdf
· Visit The Library of Congress winter gardening book list at:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/SciRefGuides/wintergardening.html
Photo credits:
Juniperus squamata 'Blue Star,' Courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder
Acer griseum. Mike Donnally
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Book Review
By
Lori Chips
 Gardening on Pavement, Tables and Hard Surfaces by George Schenk deserves to be read by any experimental or adventurous gardener. Although peripherally related to trough gardening, or any form of container gardening for that matter, a very important difference hits one with full force almost right away. George Schenk has done away with the containers! He arranges his small-scale landscapes on stone and brick "railings," on stumps and on logs and sometimes even on upside-down logs, to great effect. He uses parking pad paving as a prime piece of gardening real estate, and employs rocks and many forms, sizes and styles of tabletops to create his magical gardens. There is a precedent for at least one form of this, called slab gardening. Effective and charming, it mostly uses rock garden plants as subjects. Schenk's sense of play moves him to expand that vocabulary to include succulents, annuals, perennials, ferns, and trees. If it inspires him, he uses it! There is a chapter on planting between pavers, plus descriptions of meadows and gardens on rooftops and unused bridges. He offers helpful how-to information along the way.
This book is great fun but I would be remiss if I did not mention a potentially big problem for gardeners in many parts of the United States, including here in the Northeast. Mr. Schenk splits his gardening time between Vancouver, Auckland and Manila, and he draws his experience from gardens sited many zones warmer than ours. His plant lists, in my opinion, have overly optimistic zone assignations. Hebes and Lithodora pop immediately into mind.
Also, it would behoove the reader to plumb the text, and not just the photo captions, when deciding to embark on one of his projects. Even in Vancouver, he lifts his miniature trees that he has growing on picturesque rocks, and heels them into sawdust for the winter -- a fact not noted under the pictures. Be aware, too, that this type of gardening, by its very nature, uses a much shallower depth of soil, which instantly lessens a plant's hardiness. Add to that the fact that many of his creations are raised substantially up off the ground, and you can see the need to choose plant material at least a couple of zones hardier than usual to ensure success.
For all that, I find the book fresh, inventive, eminently readable, funny and engaging. Schenk's voice and turn of phrase is like no one else. When writing about using driftwood for retaining soil, he says, "For maximum stability, the pieces of wood should be about as big as dolphins and Dalmatians." We instantly get his point, and I, for one, will never forget his image.
By the same author:
· The Complete Shade Gardener, Timber Press, Incorporated (May 1, 2002)
· Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts and Other Miniatures, Timber Press, Incorporated; 2nd Printing edition (March 1, 1997)
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 For more information visit our Web site at www.olivernurseries.com, or call us at 203-259-5609.
Image in header: Detail from Spring, engraving by Bruegel. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dick Fund, 1926.
Copyright 2010 Oliver Nurseries
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